In contrast to a typical static corporate web site on the internet, weblogs or blogs for short, are similar to an online version of your company newsletter or personal journal but with a decidedly conversational tone and a wider reach.

With blogs, you speak with people rather than at them. It is a two way conversation where readers can post comments and respond to your posts. Blogs are human, raw, and real. Public Relations speak need not apply.

Blogs, along with podcasts (where you can create audio/video content that users can download to a computer, iPod, or any other digital audio player), are part of Web 2.0, the growing phenomenon of user-generated content, online communities, and self publishing. While there are almost as many female bloggers as males, some studies have shown that podcast listeners are disproportionately male. LLarry Gerbrandt, an executive with Nielsen Analytics, speaking through the PodcastAcademy podcast, noted that this discrepancy in podcast audiences may be due to there being a lot fewer women podcasters (people who create podcasts). Women know what women want, and with supply/demand being what it is, now might be the perfect time to start a podcast focusing on women.
 

 In an interview with David Teten and Scott Allen, co-authors of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, Allen mentions, “if you use your blog as basically a publishing medium for company announcements, filling it with the same kind of content and tone of voice as your press releases, you’re missing the point. Blog readers are looking for a reminder that there are human beings behind all the ‘corporatalk’ and ‘marketese’ – languages that real people don’t speak. Blogs aren’t done by committee and they aren’t reviewed prior to publication by the PR, marketing and/or legal departments. They are one person sharing their personal experience of what goes on in their company, industry, etc.”

Some benefits of a blog include:

• Demonstrating thought leadership.· Demonstrating thought leadership. Blogs give you the ability to immediately publish content that can demonstrate your knowledge and insight. Your website can become the go-to site for information on your industry. Andy Warhol was famous for saying that everyone has 15 minutes of fame. Now “on the web, everyone is famous to 15 people.” David Weinberger. You can become slightly famous.
• Friendly user interface. With services like TypePad, WordPress and Blogger, no IT person is needed to set up or maintain your blog. You can literally begin blogging for free and within minutes.
• Improving your “Google juice.” Among other variables, search engines look for text and links between sites to determine whether a site is authoritative enough to be placed on the first results page. Blog posts have modifiable, flexible, and current content, which in addition to readers’ comments and links from other sites, effectively increases your search engine page rankings naturally and for free. Click here for more on search engine optimization.
• Feedback. After each post in a blog, your readers can post comments (be they positive or negative). With the feedback feature you can pose questions and instantly receive customer opinions on future products, services, extensions, allowing you to get a better idea of how the broader market could react. Venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki does these kinds of tests frequently on his popular blog that gets 10,000+ hits a day.
• Reacting quickly. Without waiting for the help of computer experts, you can respond to negative comments about your postings, product, or service. It becomes another tool in your handling of crisis communications.
• Creating a human face for your business. What can seem like a cold and professional corporation with a blog can have personality, humor, and emotion. Executives who blog seem more accessible and that can help you with prospecting. Instead of sending unsolicited messages, having built a substantive reader-base with your blog, your readers may self-select and contact you about your service.
• Money. Blogging provides a source of advertising revenue from companies including Google’s AdWords and Amazon’s Associates. For example, if you search for “NetFlix” in Google, the DVD rental company, the first result is netflix.com, the second is hackingnetflix.com, a blog devoted exclusively writing on movie rentals. The owner of this website blogs full time on all the changes to NetFlix/Blockbuster Video. He makes tens of thousands of dollars a year from advertising from his site.
• Blogging is fun! You get to be creative and expressive while meeting new people.

It is important to keep your thinking cap on when blogging. While the design and content of your website may have gone through communications, PR, as well as legal experts, posts to your blog probably would not. You should be mindful of who in your company is blogging and what is being said. Most importantly, be honest or risk having negative PR in the blogosphere (community of blogs), as Edelman is now learning from.

In addition, David Teten says, “the dilemma of business blogs is that you cannot be too detailed about your business. E.g., if you talk about how fast you’re growing, that reduces your negotiating leverage with suppliers. If you mention that you’re targeting a particular sector, your competitors then know your strategy and can better fight you. Keep in mind that your entire universe of business relationships can read your blog for their own ends.” (Full disclosure: Teten is my former employer).

According to the Pew Research Center, women use their online writing for social reasons more than men. Women blog to break out of their isolation, help people in trouble or engage strangers on issues of the day. The Mercury News reports that, “while most of the 100 top-ranked bloggers in the world are men, the world’s No. 1 blogger, measured by how many bloggers link to the work, is a female Chinese pop star. The top 100 also includes Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post provides analysis and humor on the day’s political news.”

It is important to note that most blogs will never get the notoriety of The Huffington Post because they fail to get substantial readership outside of their friends, contacts, and family. There is a pronounced long tail in blogging.

BlogHer is a great resource and online community of 5,400+ female bloggers with topics ranging from everything from business to cooking and politics. Before you start your own blog, you should read at least a dozen blogs over the next month to see how other people blog before you take the plunge. BlogHer also organizes conferences for women bloggers where you can meet and learn from top bloggers including Arianna Huffington, who reportedly makes $50,000 a month in advertising revenue from her blog.

Promote your blog just as you would market your company’s products. Successful blog marketing takes time and effort, but can de done on the cheap by writing meaningful comments on the postings of popular bloggers along with a link back to your blog in your comment or profile. Other blog readers will read your comments and if your comment attracts their attention they could follow your link back to your blog.

With the help of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a feature supported by all the major blogging software, your readers can automatically be sent the content of your blog, without having to manually go to your site in their web browser. I am a big fan of the RSS Subscriber in the google toolbar.

Links are currency in the blogosphere. As with most things, building relationships is vital. Having relationships with other bloggers and having them write about you and linking can bring a treasure trove of notoriety and traffic to your blog.

The ultimate secret to success in blogging is not new. It’s actually over 250 years old. In the words of Ben Franklin, to succeed you must, “either write something worth the reading, or do something worth the writing.”
 
 

Additional Resources

www.socialmediaclub.org – My friend Howard Greenstein is organizing an “unconference” for people interested in blogging, podcasting and other social media.

www.technorati.com – Top blog search engine with link statistics.

www.thevirtualhandshake.com – Download a free copy of The Virtual Handshake, the first mass-market book on blogs and social software.

www.sethgodin.com – Great blog and resource on how to become “remarkable.”

www.whatsnextblog.com – B.L. Ochman’s blogs on business blogging.
www.redcouch.typepad.com/ – A-list blogger Robert Scoble has a best-selling book on blogging.